As Issue Divides School, Congressman Takes a Side

Representative Bob Turner, center in rear, singing “God Bless the U.S.A.” with students from Public School 90 in Brooklyn. Its principal had barred the country song from a kindergarten ceremony as too adult.Credit
Josh Haner/The New York Times

Political opportunism, at its most benign, gives us bemusement and exasperation; at the more extreme end of things it inspires a wish for high-grade exfoliants to scrub away all the contact grease and grime.

It was toward this end of the scale that Representative Bob Turner, who is seeking the Republican nomination to oppose Senator Kirsten E. Gillibrand, a Democrat, showed up at a public elementary school in Brooklyn on Monday to lead a group of flag-waving children in a defiant rendition of Lee Greenwood’s “God Bless the U.S.A.,” a song for which the school’s principal had voiced by now well-known disapproval.

“What’s better than having a congressman come out here?” Representative Turner asked me outside Public School 90 in Coney Island on Monday, believing himself perhaps to be a cast member of “Glee.” Explaining what he hoped to accomplish, he said he had come “to continue and further an appreciation for the U.S.A.”

On one level the congressman’s actions might seem anodyne enough, but P.S. 90 is an embattled place where partisan intrusion was bound to deepen conflicts. Its principal, Greta Hawkins, who is black and presides over a predominantly white staff, has been under siege, the recipient of racist hate mail from unknown sources, and the target of a group of parents and some teachers who find her management style antagonizing. The school is divided among those who are staunchly devoted to her and believe she is striving for excellence, and those who aren’t and don’t.

Representative Turner’s choral efforts were hardly welcomed by all or even by many. Coney Island is close to the congressman’s district but not actually in it.

“This is a country song,” said Dina Rosado, president of the school’s PTA and a great believer in Ms. Hawkins. “This is Brooklyn. This is not the country.” Ms. Rosado’s husband, Jorge, directed a sign at Representative Turner that said, “Shame on You.”

Photo

A counterprotest against the Turner rally included Dina Rosado, the PTA president, her son Devin and her husband, Jorge Rosado.Credit
Josh Haner/The New York Times

A news release distributed by Mr. Turner’s campaign aides explained that he had reached out to parents after Ms. Hawkins banned the song from a kindergarten ceremony on the grounds that its lyrics were too adult. That decision became a matter of national attention after The New York Post reported that she had sought to replace the song with Justin Bieber’s “Baby.” This never happened. Still, the story managed to gain an insidious traction, diagraming in miniature how we’ve wound up in a world where facts are routinely eviscerated for the sake of political spectacle.

Even after the city’s Education Department explained that Ms. Hawkins had eliminated both songs simultaneously, Representative Turner’s campaign staff perpetuated the myth, declaring in its news release that Principal Hawkins had forbidden kindergartners to sing “God Bless the U.S.A.” but instead allowed them “to sing a Justin Bieber song gauged toward teenagers.” When I asked the campaign press aide why this was being stated even when it wasn’t so, she said that she had relied on what had been “widely reported.”

Mr. Turner was not the only representative seeking to capitalize on the drama. Michael G. Grimm, whose district includes Staten Island and part of Brooklyn, but not this part of Brooklyn, and who has criticized the principal, was scheduled to attend the singalong. He changed his plans at the last minute, because, as a news release put it, “The House of Representatives is in session.” That release, too, reiterated the Bieber claim, despite the evidence. In lieu of Representative Grimm, aides were sent to hand out free copies of Mr. Greenwood’s book, “Does God Still Bless the U.S.A.?”

(Should you feel sorry for Mr. Bieber, don’t. On Tuesday the Manhattan borough president, Scott M. Stringer, felt it necessary to honor the pop star at a record signing at J&R Music World.)

With so much at stake for children in the city right now — steep cuts to early-childhood and after-school programs on the horizon, and schools that by the end of the year have run out of money for substitute teachers — it would seem little to ask for politicians to acquit themselves productively in regard to public education.

Getting passionate teachers and keeping them is, of course, one of the biggest challenges of all.

After Monday’s event had devolved into rival groups of children singing in a kind of face-off — those who came with the parents who dislike Ms. Hawkins singing Mr. Greenwood’s song, and those who came with parents who are her fans belting “America the Beautiful” — a 25-year old teacher, Chiara Nakashian, emerged from the school. An Oberlin graduate, she’d come to P.S. 90 through Teach for America and found herself deeply inspired by Ms. Hawkins’s work ethic and standards. “She is an amazing woman,” she told me.

But all the vitriol and divisiveness were getting to her. Ms. Nakashian said she’d stay another year, but after that she couldn’t say.

E-mail: bigcity@nytimes.com

A version of this article appears in print on June 20, 2012, on page A22 of the New York edition with the headline: As Issue Divides School, Congressman Takes a Side. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe